Abstract
The development of social behavior could be affected by stressful parenting. The mineralocorticoid receptor, one of the two main receptors for the stress hormone cortisol, plays a vital role in adequate responses to stress. Therefore, the effects of stressful parenting on social development (i.e., empathic concern, perspective taking and prosocial behavior) may be moderated by functional genetic variation in mineralocorticoid receptor haplotypes (a combination of alleles). A group of 343 adolescents (44.3% females) was followed from the age of 13 until 24 years. Growth curve analyses showed lower levels of prosocial behaviors and a slower increase in empathic concern and perspective taking in adolescents who reported more stressful parenting. In contrast, relatively higher levels of prosocial behavior, empathic concern and perspective taking were present in combination with stress resilient mineralocorticoid receptor haplotypes. Despite sex differences in social development with earlier social development for girls, no consistent sex differences were found with regard to mineralocorticoid receptor haplotypes. The current study showed that genetic variation in mineralocorticoid receptor impacts the social development during adolescence and young adulthood.
Highlights
Adolescents increasingly become better in perspective taking (Tousignant et al 2017), empathic concern (van der Graaff et al 2014) and show more prosocial behavior (van (UMCU), Utrecht, The Netherlands 3 Clinical Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 4 Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, TheNetherlands 5 Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 6 Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands der Graaff et al 2018)
To predict the development of prosocial behavior, empathic concern and perspective taking over the course of adolescence and young adulthood, growth curve analyses were conducted in Mplus 8 (Muthén and Muthén 2017)
One of the biological factors that could play a role in this process is the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)
Summary
Environmental stress, like abusive parenting, is supposed to influence this social development (Sandi and Haller 2015). Higher levels of environmental stress are related to less empathy and increased aggression and antisocial behavior via psychobiological processes (Susman 2006). One of the biological factors that could play a role in the relation between environmental stress and the development of social behavior is the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) The aim of this study was to investigate whether genetic variation in MR would moderate the effects of stressful parenting on the social development
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